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aaron's mindset really is different from kerr's, and kerr's thinks his is "better" (i'm not really sure which side to take on this point). but regardless of th

by andylei 14y ago

aaron's mindset really is different from kerr's, and kerr's thinks his is "better" (i'm not really sure which side to take on this point). but regardless of that point, how should we expect the law to respond to someone like aaron? should we expect that people who intentionally break laws and practice civil disobedience not be punished? if so, why bother even having laws?

nitrogen 14y ago
The purpose of laws is to provide a framework for the easy cases. The hard cases should be judged by their intent and their outcome. The vast majority of the order you see in the world around you isn't because of laws, but because of a mutual interest in cooperation.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Mutual interest in cooperation happens in the shadow of the law. My parents home country of Bangladesh is a terrible place with no law and order. Are people not mutually interested in cooperation? I don't think that is something people there want less than people here. But at base we are tribes of monkeys. I cooperate with you, but only because I know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain or act anti-socially, I can call the other monkeys to put you in your place.
  - pdonis 14y ago
    Mutual interest in cooperation happens in the shadow of the law. At the present time, yes, there's a high correlation. But 15,000 years ago, there were no laws, yet humans still engaged in mutual cooperation. Mutual cooperation is prior to law; laws are just the way we currently try to facilitate mutual cooperation. I cooperate with you, but only because I know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain or act anti-socially, I can call the other monkeys to put you in your place. This is one possible reason, but it's not the only one. If both of us can realize greater gains from mutual cooperation and trade than we can from each being isolated individuals, then we have an incentive to mutually cooperate even without any other enforcement mechanism. The reason the other enforcement mechanisms are there is that, as you say, we evolved from creatures that were not intelligent enough to consciously apprehend the incentives for mutual cooperation, so we evolved unconscious mechanisms for doing so. That's what all those tribal instincts are: calling the other monkeys to put an anti-social monkey in his place happens in the absence of laws too.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > At the present time, yes, there's a high correlation. But 15,000 years ago, there were no laws, yet humans still engaged in mutual cooperation. Depending on how you look at it, either "law" exists even in primate tribes, or what they do can't be considered "mutual cooperation." That is to say you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. In any case, law isn't "just the way we currently try" to achieve mutual cooperation. It's coincident with civilization. We have legal codes dating back 4,000 years. Law is how we scale cooperation from small bands lead by a dominant male to countries of 300 million people. > If both of us can realize greater gains from mutual cooperation and trade than we can from each being isolated individuals, then we have an incentive to mutually cooperate even without any other enforcement mechanism. You can always achieve greater gains by cooperating only up to the point where it's most advantageous for you.
      - pdonis 14y ago
        you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. I don't think "dominant male" is a valid description of the organization of all pre-civilized human tribes. I agree that the incentive for mutual cooperation is not the only incentive in play; and of course that's just as true now as it was 15,000 years ago. Law is how we scale cooperation from small bands lead by a dominant male to countries of 300 million people. I agree with this, and I should have mentioned it in my earlier post. As you note, law was the way mutual cooperation was scaled even when it just involved cities of a few thousand people 4,000 years ago. I was only trying to point out that the incentives for mutual cooperation are logically prior to the means used to facilitate it. Also, of course, scaling mutual cooperation is not the only thing law is used for; it is also used to facilitate rent-seeking and other non-cooperative behaviors. That was true 4,000 years ago as well. You can always even greater gains by cooperating only up to the point where it's most advantageous for you. If the interaction is non-iterated, yes. In an iterated interaction you can't--or rather, you can, but the other person will just retaliate by ceasing to cooperate, and you both will be worse off than you would have been if you had continued to mutually cooperate. See the Prisoner's Dilemma. (Btw, I'm not claiming that this doesn't happen. I'm just claiming that it is not actually a gain in the long run.)

by andylei 14y ago

nitrogen 14y ago

The purpose of laws is to provide a framework for the easy cases. The hard cases should be judged by their intent and their outcome. The vast majority of the order you see in the world around you isn't because of laws, but because of a mutual interest in cooperation.

rayiner 14y ago
Mutual interest in cooperation happens in the shadow of the law. My parents home country of Bangladesh is a terrible place with no law and order. Are people not mutually interested in cooperation? I don't think that is something people there want less than people here. But at base we are tribes of monkeys. I cooperate with you, but only because I know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain or act anti-socially, I can call the other monkeys to put you in your place.
- pdonis 14y ago
  Mutual interest in cooperation happens in the shadow of the law. At the present time, yes, there's a high correlation. But 15,000 years ago, there were no laws, yet humans still engaged in mutual cooperation. Mutual cooperation is prior to law; laws are just the way we currently try to facilitate mutual cooperation. I cooperate with you, but only because I know that if you don't hold up your end of the bargain or act anti-socially, I can call the other monkeys to put you in your place. This is one possible reason, but it's not the only one. If both of us can realize greater gains from mutual cooperation and trade than we can from each being isolated individuals, then we have an incentive to mutually cooperate even without any other enforcement mechanism. The reason the other enforcement mechanisms are there is that, as you say, we evolved from creatures that were not intelligent enough to consciously apprehend the incentives for mutual cooperation, so we evolved unconscious mechanisms for doing so. That's what all those tribal instincts are: calling the other monkeys to put an anti-social monkey in his place happens in the absence of laws too.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > At the present time, yes, there's a high correlation. But 15,000 years ago, there were no laws, yet humans still engaged in mutual cooperation. Depending on how you look at it, either "law" exists even in primate tribes, or what they do can't be considered "mutual cooperation." That is to say you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. In any case, law isn't "just the way we currently try" to achieve mutual cooperation. It's coincident with civilization. We have legal codes dating back 4,000 years. Law is how we scale cooperation from small bands lead by a dominant male to countries of 300 million people. > If both of us can realize greater gains from mutual cooperation and trade than we can from each being isolated individuals, then we have an incentive to mutually cooperate even without any other enforcement mechanism. You can always achieve greater gains by cooperating only up to the point where it's most advantageous for you.
    - pdonis 14y ago
      you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. I don't think "dominant male" is a valid description of the organization of all pre-civilized human tribes. I agree that the incentive for mutual cooperation is not the only incentive in play; and of course that's just as true now as it was 15,000 years ago. Law is how we scale cooperation from small bands lead by a dominant male to countries of 300 million people. I agree with this, and I should have mentioned it in my earlier post. As you note, law was the way mutual cooperation was scaled even when it just involved cities of a few thousand people 4,000 years ago. I was only trying to point out that the incentives for mutual cooperation are logically prior to the means used to facilitate it. Also, of course, scaling mutual cooperation is not the only thing law is used for; it is also used to facilitate rent-seeking and other non-cooperative behaviors. That was true 4,000 years ago as well. You can always even greater gains by cooperating only up to the point where it's most advantageous for you. If the interaction is non-iterated, yes. In an iterated interaction you can't--or rather, you can, but the other person will just retaliate by ceasing to cooperate, and you both will be worse off than you would have been if you had continued to mutually cooperate. See the Prisoner's Dilemma. (Btw, I'm not claiming that this doesn't happen. I'm just claiming that it is not actually a gain in the long run.)